By Dr. Steve Arnold, Practice Director

Web 2.0 isn’t just for marketers. Understanding, evaluating and providing appropriate Web 2.0 functionality is a critical skill for IT executives. Increasingly, everyone in your company from the C-suite to front line is calling for Web 2.0 tools to enhance business performance. That call will only increase in volume (in both its literal and metaphorical senses).

We addressed this issue in depth at a recent Peer Group meeting, and I thought I’d share a few takeaways.

What is Web 2.0? After the dot-com bust, the one-way Web was dead. What replaced it was a multi-way Web with enormous amounts of user-generated content (UGC) interacting with published content. As a result, user interest experienced a virtual “big bang.” If Web 2.0 has an essential definition, it’s the explosion of user content and the resulting expansion of Web-based interactive tools.

What is the business impact of Web 2.0? Along with that explosion came a variety of business concepts that have great merit and deserve an IT professional’s attention. For example, the principle of the “long tail.” Many Web 2.0 business have as their targets mulitple small niches that, with sufficient accumulation, amount to a large collective market. Speaking with these niches requires different IT approaches and tools than one-size-fits-all strategies. As a result, applications are increasingly sophisticated in self-service data management, giving companies unique, hard-to-recreate data sources for competitive advantage.

Here are some key takeaways from the meeting:

• Proprietary databases yield a durable competitive advantage.
• Users add value.
• Set network effects of user content by default.
• Add improvements to Web-based applications regularly.
• Make automating operations a core competency.
• Integrate services across a wide variety of devices, including handhelds.

There’s more, of course. By its nature, the Web 2.0 (and beyond) story is endless. Part of our commitment at the UWEBC is to be a resource for the collective intelligence generated by the applied research capabilities of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the voluminous experience of our member companies. As always, meeting materials on this topic are available to those members.

Steve is UWEBC Practice Director of the IT Executives Circle and Information Security Peer Groups. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University. You can reach him at 608-890-1291 or slarnold@wisc.edu.